The last article about the female Malfoy made me think. I assumed the girl would be brought up with better manners than Draco, because propriety, manners, social standings and histories of important families and their members would be something to always keep in mind. After all, Narcissa was a Black, and they had that family tree posted prominently on the wall. Who is who is the cornerstone of their world. You want to maintain connections, be good with the right people, and even if important families are on the other side in a wizard war, you don’t want to burn the bridges permanently. You want to leave doors open. You don’t want to create mortal enemies with careless words, which is easy to do if you’re ignorant and arrogant.

So then I thought, wouldn’t Draco need to know most of that, as well? And wouldn’t that child have a governess, or a tutor, who would make sure that they know all that when you wake them up at 3AM in the morning, the way Black children were constantly taught that?

Apparently not, because Draco went around making enemies and antagonising people, while honing alliances with the children of Death Eaters. Almost everything he did was a social faux pas of some kind, or he made a fool of himself by making wrong assumptions due to ignorance. For instance, he assumed that Potter is poor because he’s hanging out with the Weasleys. First of all, it’s not going to work as an insult if it’s not even remotely true; Potter is one of the wealthiest people in the world, he could buy a small country if he felt like it. Second, you don’t antagonise the last heir of the only family in the world that can actually threaten yours in stature. Third, if you don’t have anything constructive to say, shut the fuck up. It’s amazing that Malfoy just went around with his two henchmen who were dumber than rocks, and antagonised people. That’s not what noble or wealthy people are supposed to be doing at school. You’re supposed to build connections, alliances, your future network. If you can’t make someone a friend, at least don’t make them an enemy. Stay on neutral terms. Leave the doors open. Whatever you currently think of someone, you’re in the same school. You’re in approximately similar social class. You’re in the same social circle. Be nice to people. If you can’t be nice, be neutral or distant.

Basically, Draco Malfoy is such an unclouth brat, that he really goes out of his way to make enemies of people, and without any need for it whatsoever. It’s amazing. For instance, yeah, mock Potter by saying he’s a little baby crying for his mommy. That’s going to help you with someone whose parents were murdered by your parents’ demonic cult leader, so he had to grow up without them since he was a year old. That sounds like a crash course in things to avoid because you had a tutor as a child, someone who told you what things you should never do unless you want to make enemies for life who will eventually find a way to end you.

Then I cross-referenced the Harry Potter universe with the Salvos universe by Melas Delta, and sure, the nobility there have personal tutors or butlers who take care of their manners, presentation, etiquette and keep them informed about the people they are encountering. Saffron, for instance, is a Lady of the Merryster family, a wealthy noble; she has Matthew, her butler, around her at almost all times, and he watches that she doesn’t do something stupid. Sure, she’s arrogant and I suppose she’s a rich brat like Draco Malfoy, and she addresses servants and subordinates in a pretty arrogant manner, and she’s also whiny, demanding and conceited, at least in the beginning. However, when she meets an important person she doesn’t know, her first assumption is that this might be someone much more important later on, and she’s polite, graceful, and creates a place for a social connection for later on, if that materialises. For instance, when she meets Salvos, Salvos is of very local notoriety, but impressive, and seems to climb the social ladder very aggressively. Saffron is very kind with her, doesn’t act pompous or distant, and creates a friendship that proves to be the most important one she ever made, because when they met again, Salvos was a lvl. 105 Liberator of the Plaguelands, famous and wealthy, and they ended up being roommates in the same school, and soon thereafter Salvos saved her family from Belzu when they would have otherwise all died. So, by acting with poise and tact and befriending a currently marginally important person she made the best move in her entire life. She could as well have told Salvos that she’s not anywhere near important enough for her to talk to, and that would be that.

Later, Saffron teaches Salvos exactly the things somebody should have taught Draco Malfoy – don’t offend people with your careless actions. Treat their emotions with tact. Don’t make enemies. Try to make friends when possible. Cultivate your image as a smart, competent, reasonable and kind person, rather than a foolish, careless idiot who offends people when that brings nothing, and kindness wouldn’t cost you anything really.

Salvos universe, honestly, makes much more sense than the Harry Potter universe in that sense – here, the nobles actually act in a manner that’s constructive if you want to have a good network of social connections, be able to navigate on that network later on by offering services, calling on favours and so on, and not making enemies where that’s not useful or necessary.

Even with enemies, if you can’t actually kill them, it might be a good idea to not annoy them constantly. If you annoy them, they will remember that you’re a problem and focus their attention and energy on destroying or disrupting you. If you leave them alone, they will likely not think of you and do something else that won’t bother you. If someone’s an enemy, insulting them to the point where they make their mission in life to ruin you is the worst you can do.

In the Harry Potter series, Malfoy keeps going out of his way to cultivate his enemy roster. It’s like he has a list of the most important people on the other side of the wizard war, and insults them in ways that will stick. Eventually, his family is defeated, loses its social standing, and barely escapes prison. Well done, mate. 🙂

So, that’s the limit of the Lyra Malfoy thought experiment I made in the last article. If there’s no governess to drill that stuff into the child from early on, and the parents spoil them, the result is Draco Malfoy, and it’s not magically better when it’s gender-swapped. A spoiled girl with poor manners, that commits a social faux-pas with every stupidly arrogant move will still make enemies everywhere.

So, I made certain assumptions in my thought experiment that have no basis in the original books, but I needed them in order to produce a functional person that would make the concept work. I made the assumption that a girl would have more training in social grace, because of one single difference: if Malfoys have only one female child, they will become extinct in a male line. The name Malfoy dies when she’s married. Their wealth and family heritage merges into those of her husband. Absolutely everything depends on the quality of the man she marries. This wouldn’t apply for the male child. As long as he brings in someone decent as his wife, everything is fine. The family name, wealth and fortune continue undisturbed. Draco’s choice of a wife is up to him, and it doesn’t matter, as long as she’s not a muggle-born. He has all the choices in the wizard world. Lyra does not. It has to be someone that could be trusted with the continuation of the Malfoy heritage. There are only a few families important enough for her to marry into, wealthy enough for it not to be a terrible mismatch, and they have male heirs of her age. Harry Potter is firmly entrenched at the first place of that list. He’s descended from the Peverell family that became extinct in the male line, and a Deathly Hallow is his family heirloom. His origins are tied to the roots of the history of the wizard world. His wealth is enormous, and his social clout is even greater.

So, I made an assumption. Narcissa Malfoy, nee Black, who memorized that Black family tree since she was a child, would begin teaching that to her daughter before she’s walking. To a pureblood supremacist like herself, that would be the most important thing in the world to learn. Lyra would learn that the most important thing for her is to marry a person suitable for continuation of their family line, and she would know all the suitable candidates by name, with their entire family history. She would know what Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom and the other one or two candidates had for breakfast when they were five. She would know never to make fun of them, never to hurt them with anything personal enough to stick, never to make fun of Harry Potter for his dead parents, or make fun of Neville Longbottom for his parents being tortured to insanity by her sister.

A boy would be taught that he represents the Malfoy name and needs to hurt their enemies and make them afraid. He would go around and cultivate the enemy roster, regardless of how unwise that is strategically, because he would be a spoiled brat, and that would be because family line depends on him marrying anyone. It doesn’t depend on him marrying a person from a specific, very short list. Lyra would, therefore, be taught better, by her mother, or by a governess. It would be the air she breathes. When she talks to Harry Potter, she knows she’s talking to the single most desirable man for her to marry. She also knows he’s at the very top of the list of family enemies. The way to reconcile the two is to show the flag, but do it in a very precise, tactful way, that will hurt Potter enough to make him reconsider his political position, and yet never hurt him personally in a way that would close that most important door. Lyra would be trained as a supreme diplomat. Her social skills would be dark, but precise and focused. She would be under a lot of stress to maintain all that posturing and facade, and she would have an outlet in Quidditch, where she would get sweaty, dirty, rained on, flown into a wall by Harry, or ploughing his head into the dirt in return, and after they would be patched up in the hospital wing and cleaned up, she would look pristine in her school uniform, with not a hair out of place, and Harry would wonder if that’s even the same person. He would be slightly better than her as a Seeker, because he is better than Draco, and I think it would remain that way with Lyra, but it’s close. What’s not close is the difference in their verbal skills, where she absolutely pulverises him when they have an exchange of quips. His are blunt and emotional, and hers are an icy scalpel. She would politely greet him in the corridor, look at Hermione beside him, and say “You have a very nice pet hamster, Potter. Did you buy it at Diagon Alley, or did it follow you home on its own?”, to which he would fume impotently trying to figure out a way to defend his friend’s honour, but nothing coherent would come out, to great entertainment of the crowd. He also wouldn’t have the option to kick her teeth in, the way he would with Draco. With a girl who never got into his face, remained calm, poised and at a polite distance, physical violence is never an option. There’s no exchange of ambushes that end up with bloody heads, no wand duels. She never draws a wand at him, ever, until that fateful day in the bathroom, which is why that would have a devastating impact on him later. They don’t have a history of violence between them outside of Quidditch court, and that’s always contained within the rules of the sport. The first ever violence between them is her using Cruciatus curse, but interrupted by a faster duelist using Sectumsempra, slaughtering her and having her survive only because the spell missed her neck, and because Snape happened to be nearby. Harry would not be able to brush that one away the way he could with Draco – it was war, he was dealing with a Death Eater who conspired to kill Dumbledore and let a horde of Death Eaters into Hogwarts. They had a history of violent encounters between them, and Draco was using Crucio as his opening move. Sure, Harry wouldn’t have used Sectumsempra had he known what an evil spell that is, and that thing is so evil you get to Azkaban for using it on a human. Using it on Draco was really bad, but he managed to get past it. Using it against that dignified, capable girl, who never before even thought of violence against him, because she was defensive about being caught crying in a girl’s bathroom, and reducing her to drowning in her own pooling blood on the floor, that’s something you don’t just get over, that’s an injury you can repay only if you marry her and care for her your entire life. That event changes things between them forever, because here, Harry loses his white knight aura. He always assumes he’s the good guy, the enemy is the bad guy, and things never change. Now, he did something that makes him the bad guy in his own eyes. Lyra was trying to keep herself and her parents alive when they were the hostages of Voldemort in their own home, and she was crying because she was forced to do something she didn’t want to, but if she didn’t, her family would be killed for treason. It’s not exactly an enemy he imagined, and seeing her bleeding on the floor didn’t make him feel like a white night slaughtering a dragon, it made him feel like Jack the Ripper.

Honestly, I don’t know how he didn’t guess what that spell does – its name translates to “be sliced apart forever”, which can’t be good however you put it. I think the reason why Potter used it was because Malfoy’s use of Crucio put him in the same mode he was in the last time that was used against him, by Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange. That spell means fight to the death for him, and he used the worst thing he had at the top of his tongue. It turned out to be much worse than he intended.

So, here’s where the things between them change. He no longer feels like a victim of a cold Princess who insults his friends. He feels he owes her, big time. So, he sees her future actions with much more understanding and less judgment than he used to. He already saw through Voldemort’s eyes that her family are prisoners in their own home, and now that really clicks. He starts feeling for her, and understands what a terrible position she is in, and only trying to save her family now. It’s no longer an ideological war, where she’s at the opposite side. Sure, her parents kind of had it coming, but she’s innocent in all this, and was always just trying to be a good daughter. Also, when he and his friends were captured and brought to Malfoy Manor, she refused to positively identify him, risking everything to save him, thus putting him into even more debt – and the look she gave him, meaning “please win”, felt like complete surrender. Harry is very intuitive in a crisis, and he read everything in that look; it was a look of a wife putting all her trust in her husband. Her life, her family, her entire future. There was no longer any balancing between the two lists, and he understood then that he could always feel some of that look in her, and it always haunted him because he couldn’t figure it out. He could never figure out why her insults always tore at everything around him, while making a protective shell around him, making him feel precious. Her insults made him feel like a great noble Lord who is demeaning himself by the company he keeps, and it would have been so much easier for her to tear at him personally, with how good she was at it, and how vulnerable he was. Others did it all the time, but never her.

When he returned to Hogwarts in search of the Horcrux and students had to choose sides, she came to his side without hesitation, without a second thought. No drama; she held his hand briefly, but the intimacy of that moment was staggering, because in their hearts they were already married at that point. And then he went to the woods alone to be killed, and she had to watch Hagrid bringing him there as if dead, and she had to watch.

Later, he would joke that he owes her three times over, for the bathroom, for the Manor, and for putting her through that. She got serious. “No, that’s not true. In the bathroom, I had it coming. I used Crucio against you, and when my mind turned on enough to realise what I had done, I felt I had it coming. I deserved to be hit by that horror. It was also a payback for all the insults over the years, when I felt I had to be terrible with you because you’re the enemy and I had to show the family colours. I deserved punishment. Also, when I refused to identify you, I was already on your side in the war. I was not saving an enemy, I was just doing the only thing I could in the war against that evil. I couldn’t do it openly yet, but don’t think I changed sides only when I could openly stand at your side. I was almost there even before the bathroom, and I was definitely there after Dumbledore’s death. We just didn’t get to talk, and my parents were prisoners. But for putting me through those moments when I thought you were dead, you will repay me for as long as you live”.

But of course, this ending would only be realistic if Lyra received a proper upbringing, of the kind Saffron received in the Salvos universe. Saffron can be seen acting as entitled and arrogant as Draco. She’s also a coward who freezes and freaks out when she’s physically threatened. However, Saffron was taught proper behaviour and she had Matthew to make sure she behaved. A properly raised Malfoy girl would still be a pompous, arrogant, spoiled little Princess, but she would also be taught what you never do. You never strike at soft targets when the person you’re arguing with is someone whose children you might want to bear one day, and this needs to be the undertone of every argument with male heirs of noble families you will ever have. If you want to preserve your status as a Lady, you need to address a heir of a noble family as a Lord. He might currently be your enemy, but those things can change, and his status as high nobility remains. A boy would be taught to just show the family flag to the enemy. A girl would be taught that as well, but also that there are only a few people who can be trusted to carry that flag and keep her family in a place of honour with her at their side. If you insult such a man in a way that will stay with him forever, you may just have destroyed your family’s future.

So, there’s the limit of the gender-swap. It would only work if the girl was brought up properly and learned to be considerate and mindful of those things since early childhood. A Malfoy boy at 10 can be a spoiled brat. A Malfoy girl at 10 is also a spoiled brat, but she’s had it hammered into her head the exact names of boys she is never, ever allowed to be a spoiled brat with. With them, even if they are currently enemies, she needs to be respectful and considerate. Sure, she would insult Ron and Hermione horribly, demeaning their humanity in every way. Harry would be so mad he’d go pound a pillow in his bedroom until his hand hurt. But the infuriating part would be the way she greeted him every time, before proceeding to tear at his friends. There was something in her stance that made him feel precious, respected and cherished, and he couldn’t understand how that can coexist with the vitriolic contempt she has for his friends. So, that’s the difference that would have to exist for them to be romantically involved later, because we have to have in mind that Harry and Draco never really became good friends, despite being allies in war at some point. They were polite and cordial, but that was it. In order for there to be more, you can’t just make Malfoy into a cute girl and expect that to override everything, because it wouldn’t. You can’t have that girl be disrespectful and demeaning to him personally, insult his mother and ridicule his deep wounds, and expect them to get over it just because hormones are flaring. You can’t have her be a total bitch and have him like her. There must be that something that’s haunting him from early childhood, where she never tears at his obvious soft spots despite having the ability to do so. There must be the fact that she never hits him, she never fires a hex at him in anger, never gets into his face, despite the fact that she could. He needs to keep wondering why, despite being angry at her, and despite knowing she’s the enemy. She needs to be very precise and selective about being an entitled bitch. Saffron is an excellent example of a character of that kind, written well.